Sunday, April 19, 2015

Israel must banish invented stereotypes

It's time to banish the discourse of invented ethnic identities to the dustbin of history, writes Dr Seth Frantzman in the Algemeiner in the wake of the resurgence of the supposed 'ethnic demon' behind Likud's election victory (with thanks : Lynne T)

A scene from the film Sallah Shabati, a parody of Mizrahi immigrants to Israel

The fallout from the Israeli elections have produced an unprecedented
outpouring of stereotypes and racist statements in the media. The ones
that got the most attention abroad were those directed at Arab voters
by the Prime Minister. But another real problem remains unresolved in
Israel: The visceral hatred and contempt that many “Ashkenazi” or
European-origin Israelis have for “Mizrahi” Jews, and the way that the
media exacerbates racial stereotypes by repeating them without
self-critique.

When the election was over and the results had shown that Netanyahu’s
Likud had gotten 30 seats in the Knesset, an outpouring of rancor began
on social media. Someone was to blame. Like in all nationalist
societies – and Israel is a nationalist society on the left and right –
the blame must be directed at a group. In Israel one doesn’t blame
“Likud voters” but rather an ethnic scapegoat called “Mizrahim.”

Larry Derfner at the website +972 asked “what’s an Ashkenazi Leftist
to do?” He wrote he was “referring only to poor, generally
under-educated Mizrahim who make up the base of Likud supporters.” He
asserted that “Israeli leftists…are disproportionately Ashkenazi.” He
claimed “Israeli leftists say we have to treat the poor Mizrahim as
equals.”

In no other democracy in the Western world would a
self-described “left wing” person wonder about the need to treat others
as equals. Equality is at the basis of a liberal, leftist, and
progressive outlook.

Following on the heels of the Derfner piece was one by Avi
Issacharoff at the Times of Israel entitled, “Why did Bibi win? Because
he speaks fluent Mizrahi.” He claimed that “Mizrahim are celebrating
their ‘victory’ over the Ashkenazim in the recent elections.” Just as
Derfner had argued poor Mizrahim were racist, Issacharoff claimed that
many people of Mizrahi origin have “xenophobia, particularly towards
Arabs.”

These authors and many others invent a stereotype of poor racist
“Mizrahim” that are responsible for the election of Likud. No one
surveyed Likud voters to see how many are actually “Mizrahi.” In fact
many Likud voters come from areas that are wealthy and middle class,
like my own neighborhood of Rehavia, where at least 25 percent voted
Likud. Are Likud voters more racist towards Arabs than Zionist Union
voters? Did anyone take time to poll both groups and ask?

On a TV program, a former professor was invited on after he had
bashed Mizrahi voters on his Facebook account. He told a Moroccan woman
on the show that “nothing bad would have happened if your parents had
stayed in Morocco and rotted there.” Another campaign on Facebook was
started to “punish” poorer towns in Israel by not giving charity to
them. Guy Spigelman, CEO of the NGO PresenTense asked after the
election in an article in Haaretz, “Why should we feel extra
responsibility for the education, health and welfare of all Israelis?”
There aren’t words to describe how wrong that is.

Some Israelis are trying to search for a scapegoat for Netanyahu’s
victory. Some of them who define themselves as left wing, “Ashkenazi”
and progressive have painted a stereotypical picture of “the poor” as
“racist.” It is as if to be born white and from a European family
automatically makes you better in Israel, despite the fact that Baruch
Goldstein, Meir Kahane, and most of the virulent racists in Israeli
history have also been European-origin Jews.

It’s time for Israelis to banish this discourse to the dustbin of
history. Haven’t Jews been scapegoated long enough without reflecting
that hate-mongering tool inward?

Ashkenazi and Mizrahi are invented identities, born of a misreading
of Jewish history. There were European Jewish families from Egypt and
Sephardic Jewish families from Amsterdam who came to Israel; there is
mass intermarriage. There are more than a million Russian-origin Jews
in Israel; Ethiopians and Druze; and some of them vote Likud.

1 comment:

Ironically that by and large the only Ashkenazi on Mizrachi bigotry that exists in Israel today is that of the Leftists. It is true that virtually all Leftists are Ashkenazim. It has always been that way but much more so in the Post Oslo Era. I suggest that Leftists ask themselves why.

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Introduction

In just 50 years, almost a million Jews, whose communities stretch back up to 3,000 years, have been 'ethnically cleansed' from 10 Arab countries. These refugees outnumber the Palestinian refugees two to one, but their narrative has all but been ignored. Unlike Palestinian refugees, they fled not war, but systematic persecution. Seen in this light, Israel, where some 50 percent of the Jewish population descend from these refugees and are now full citizens, is the legitimate expression of the self-determination of an oppressed indigenous, Middle Eastern people.This website is dedicated to preserving the memory of the near-extinct Jewish communities, which can never return to what and where they once were - even if they wanted to. It will attempt to pass on the stories of the Jewish refugees and their current struggle for recognition and restitution. Awareness of the injustice done to these Jews can only advance the cause of peace and reconciliation.(Iran: once an ally of Israel, the Islamic Republic of Iran is now an implacable enemy and numbers of Iranian Jews have fallen drastically from 80,000 to 20,000 since the 1979 Islamic revolution. Their plight - and that of all other communities threatened by Islamism - does therefore fall within the scope of this blog.)